A Lady of Quality eBook

He spent but little time in her society, for she was
a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little
happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with
scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were
left. He scarce remembered her existence when
he did not see her face, and he was certainly not
thinking of her this morning, having other things in
view, and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was
shortening a stirrup and being sworn at for his awkwardness,
he by accident cast his eye upward to a chamber window
peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing
so he saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look
down upon him as if searching for him with a purpose.

He uttered an exclamation of anger.

“Damnation! Mother Posset again,”
he said. “What does she there, old frump?”

The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in
a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—­among
the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared
making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his
side where he sat on his black horse.

“The Devil!” he exclaimed—­“what
are you here for? ’Tis not time for another
wench upstairs, surely?”

“’Tis not time,” answered the old
nurse acidly, taking her tone from his own. “But
there is one, but an hour old, and my lady—­”

“Be damned to her!” quoth Sir Jeoffry
savagely. “A ninth one—­and ’tis
nine too many. ’Tis more than man can bear.
She does it but to spite me.”

“’Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who
wants an heir,” the old woman answered, as disrespectful
of his spouse as he was, being a time-serving crone,
and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle women
who did not as their husbands would have them in the
way of offspring. “It should have been
a fine boy, but it is not, and my lady—­”

“Damn her puling tricks!” said Sir Jeoffry
again, pulling at his horse’s bit until the
beast reared.

“She would not let me rest until I came to you,”
said the nurse resentfully. “She would
have you told that she felt strangely, and before
you went forth would have a word with you.”

“I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it
if I could,” was his answer. “What
folly does she give way to? This is the ninth
time she hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish
as she—­but nine is more than I have patience
for.”

“She is light-headed, mayhap,” said the
nurse. “She lieth huddled in a heap, staring
and muttering, and she would leave me no peace till
I promised to say to you, ’For the sake of poor
little Daphne, whom you will sure remember.’
She pinched my hand and said it again and again.”

Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse’s mouth and
swore again.

“She was fifteen then, and had not given me
nine yellow-faced wenches,” he said. “Tell
her I had gone a-hunting and you were too late;”
and he struck his big black beast with the whip, and
it bounded away with him, hounds and huntsmen and
fellow-roysterers galloping after, his guests, who
had caught at the reason of his wrath, grinning as
they rode.